Cocaine trafficker tied to bomb plot against Tara Hayer released on bail

Kim Bolan, Vancouver Sun12.18.2012

Tara Singh Hayer is the only journalist to be assassinated in Canada. The Surrey reporter and publisher of the Indo-Canadian Times survived a previous attempt on his life, which left him in a wheelchair, before he was murdered in 1998.

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METRO VANCOUVER -- It was third time lucky Monday for convicted cocaine trafficker Jean Gaetan Gingras.

In September, B.C. Court of Appeal Chief Justice Lance Finch denied him bail pending an appeal of his drug conviction, saying to release Gingras would diminish the public’s confidence in the administration of justice.

Again last month, five other appeal court judges agreed with Finch and denied Gingras bail a second time.

But on Monday, Gingras, 70, was released on bail by another appeal court judge, just in time for Christmas.

The fact that Gingras got three attempts in front of the same court to get out of jail until his April appeal frustrates Liberal MLA Dave Hayer, whose journalist father Tara was the target of a 1986 attempted bombing. Gingras admitted his involvement in the failed bombing though has never been charged.

“I am really upset by this,” Dave Hayer said Tuesday. “We have heard over and over again how some of these criminals really know how to manipulate the system.”

Hayer said the courts appear to place the rights of criminals before the rights of victims.

“I have been raising this issue for a long time. Things need to change,” Hayer said.

Gingras was convicted last March of conspiracy to purchase cocaine and money laundering. He was sentenced in August to 10 years in jail.

The drug case stemmed from an undercover RCMP investigation into several attempts on the life of Tara Singh Hayer, who was murdered on Nov. 18, 1998. Hayer, who had helped police in the Air India investigation, was also paralyzed in a 1988 shooting.

During a 2008 police probe, Gingras admitted to a Mountie posing as a South American drug smuggler that he was hired to place a bomb outside Hayer’s Surrey newspaper office in January 1986 by a Montreal man linked to the Babbar Khalsa terrorist group.

Gingras told the cop the bomb was meant to send a message to Hayer. He also denied having anything to do with Hayer’s murder. A recording of the conversation was played during his trial last January.

The conversation, like 80 per cent of those captured on intercepts during the investigation, was in English.

Gingras, a francophone originally from Montreal, is now appealing his convictions, claiming he was entitled to a trial in French. He also claims he only understood 30 per of what was said during the B.C. Supreme Court proceedings, despite the fact that he had a French interpreter throughout the trial and often chatted on breaks in English.

The Crown argued that Gingras never requested a trial in French, nor complained during the proceedings that he couldn’t understand. He is now saying that his former lawyer, Karen Bastow, gave him misleading advice about having a French trial.

The first two appeal court rulings said that Gingras’ grounds of appeal are not likely to succeed.

“The appellant has been convicted of serious offences and has received a sentence of 10 years imprisonment,” Chief Justice Finch said in his Sept. 5 ruling. “I consider none of the grounds of appeal advanced to be strong. On balance, I consider that public confidence in the administration of justice could well be diminished if bail were to be granted.”

The second appeal court ruling on Nov. 20 said “Gingras has some difficult hurdles to overcome. His prospects for success are far from certain.”

The new bail hearing was granted after Bastow swore out an affidavit about Gingras’ difficulty understanding English, as well as his hearing problems. The affidavit was considered new information and bail was granted.

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